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Black History Month 2025 - African Americans in Labor

"The 2025 Black History Month theme, African Americans, and Labor, focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people. Indeed, work is at the very center of much of Black history and culture." - from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History This Black History Month, check out a book (or several!) from this list to expand your knowledge about seen and unseen labor carried out by the Black community. Organized by publication date, this list focuses on a variety of labor performed by the Black community, from agriculture to nursing, from entertainment to prison labor.

16 items

  • Rooted

    the American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership

    Baker, Brea,
    The history of Black land stewardship and the widening racial wealth gap due to land theft is an overlooked topic. This book traces the experiences of Brea Baker's family history of land stewardship and land theft, and serves as a…
    BookNew York : One World, [2024] — 333.33508 B1672r 2024
  • Black Folk

    the Roots of the Black Working Class

    Kelley, Blair Murphy, 1973-
    BookNew York, N.Y. : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, [2023] — 331.6396 K2939b 2023
  • Organize, Fight, Win

    Black Communist Women's Political Writing

    BookLondon ; New York : Verso, 2022. — 335.43089 O688 2022
  • The Three Mothers

    How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

    Tubbs, Anna Malaika,
    BookNew York, NY : Flatiron Books, 2021. — 306.8743 T884t 2021
  • Ben Fletcher

    the Life and Times of a Black Wobbly

    Cole, Peter, 1969-
    BookOakland, CA : PM Press, [2021] — 331.88 B4562 2020
  • Whaling Captains of Color

    America's First Meritocracy

    Finley, Skip,
    BookAnnapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, [2020] — 639.28092 F513w 2020
  • Workers on Arrival

    Black Labor in the Making of America

    Trotter, Joe William, 1945-
    BookOakland, California : University of California Press, [2019] — 331.6396 T8586w 2019
  • Freedom Farmers

    Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement

    White, Monica M. (Monica Marie), 1967-
    BookChapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2018] — 305.89607 W5866f 2018
  • Hammer and Hoe

    Alabama Communists During the Great Depression

    Kelley, Robin D. G.
    BookChapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2015] — 324.76107 K2946h 2015
  • Chained in Silence

    Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South

    LeFlouria, Talitha L.,
    BookChapel Hill [North Carolina] : The University of North Carolina Press, [2015] — 331.4 L4939c 2015
  • Brotherhoods of Color

    Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality

    Arnesen, Eric
    eBookCambridge : Harvard University Press, 2009. — Electronic book
  • Sister Circle

    Black Women and Work

    BookNew Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, [2002] — 331.4089 S623 2002
  • Black Workers Remember

    An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle

    Honey, Michael K.
    BookBerkeley, Calif. : University of California Press, ©1999. — 331.6396 P667b 1999